Alone in The World
by L. B. Frost
Summary: Rising from the ice, Jack finds himself alone and scared. Chosen by the moon to fill a role meant for greatness, he backs out, knowing he will fail. When Pitch returns after years of peace to once more rule the night, Jack will have to decide whether he really is a Guardian... or a useless Snow Miser after all. Re write of film plot, with new bombshells and plot twists.
1. Chapter 1

_Of course, it was oh...so many years ago._

_But I remember it well._

_It could really be called my first memory, that far off, harshly cold winter's night..._

It was dark, and it seemed darkness was all there was, and had ever been, surrounding.

Was I breathing?

Wait...what WAS breathing...

Oh...right...got it now.

Everything was fragmented: remembering the simplest terms like arm or leg was hard, but came back, enough information for me to know I was human, and at least I was pretty sure I was male, but that term held no real relevance at the time for me, as I allowed the darkness to carry me along, weightless.

I was scared: the darkness was so full. I saw nothing.

It was cold, terrible, awful cold that permeated my very bones, chilling me to my core.

Then...then I saw it: a beacon, a light, shining above me.

As I was raised into the dark night, I wasn't scared anymore, gasping at the air like a newborn, which, in a sense, I guess I was.

I was staring skyward, the stars glittering like a handful of tossed diamonds against the painted darkness of the skies.

Then I saw it, the moon, shining down at me, a smile on its surface even as one found its way onto my lips, as I felt the ground gently shift beneath me to support me, my feet unsteady at first but holding me up in the end.

I gazed at my hands, almost entranced by them, pale and chilled, veins as fine as spiderhair racing across them under the skin.

I looked up, and the moon looked back: I smiled, suddenly so calm, my racing thoughts at ease with what was going on.

I wandered aimlessly, the surface beneath me clear but hard... ice? My mind called up the word.

Dimly, somewhere, I thought there should be a hole around it somewhere, but none was to be seen as I walked along.

My foot hit something, and I glanced down to see a long, curved stick...no...a staff.

I picked it up, curious, and nearly dropped it when icy blue energy erupted from it, the end cracking to the ice with a thud.

What happened was amazing: ice wrapped across the ice in fern patterns, racing along merrily from the staff's tip, even as ice wound into the very wood itself.

Amazed, I tapped a tall pine tree, and laughed at the effect.

Heh, I must have looked all of four years old: racing across the ice, dragging my staff along to plaster the pond surface with frost, the blue beautiful under the moon's glow.

I got going so fast, I slipped, but...I didn't fall.

The wind carried me high over the pond, air currents racing along me like birds, calling to me, their voices high and faint, like chiming bells on Sunday.

I hovered over the pond, fifty feet above, breathing in at the height and cold, watching the pond frost over in a pattern from my childish running.

" Ow..dang...ahhh..." I grunted, suddenly dropping down among the branches of a tree, whapping myself pretty good in the shins on the landing.

" Ha...cool..." I said, brushing myself up and sitting up.

Lights caught my eye: a village.

Calling on the winds, I fluttered along, ungracefully smacking into a snowdrift.

" Ow...heh..." I jumped up, brushing myself off as a young woman hurried by, giggling.

" Hi! " I called to her, even as she hurried along.

I waved and greeted everyone, my face warmed by the glow of firelight from bonfires and firepits, the smell of basting chicken heavy in the air.

"... but I swear... the hole was gone again. After Jack fell in...it was gone. And the moon went all funny." A girl was telling a brown haired woman.

" Emma, stop telling lies..I..."

The woman walked off, tears in her aqua eyes.

" Ma'am? Are you o.." She was gone, a door to a smaller cabin at the villages edge slammed hard.

" Rude. " I muttered.

A girl raced towards me, laughing in a game of Tag and Run.

" Oh, hey, excuse me, can you tell me where I a..."

Cold...horrible coold..as the girl passed through me.

I gasped, and stepped back into a man, who grunted a curse about a chill as he passed by me.

" Hey...hello? Can anyone hear me?" Panic edged my voice, as fires were doused and children called in.

As the village darkened, I walked off, my heart feeling dead.

_You will survive this, Jack. _

" Says who? No one can see me and...what? Who's Jack?"

_That's you. Jack Frost. your name, my lad. _

I realized the voice was the moon, clouds parting to let its glow shine on my face.

_Your name is Jack Frost, and one day...you will be the most important of them all._

* * *

My name, is Jack Frost. How do I know that? Because the moon told me.

And that... was a very long time ago.


	2. Chapter 2

As years are wont to do, the slipped by, Winter after Winter, season after season, as I stayed as I had been oh so long ago.

I watched children grow up, raise children of their own, see grandchildren raised as they themselves grew old, and soon die, as their own children watched their children begin the cycle anew.

Yet I stayed the same: Oh, I think I got more agile, as I perfected my craft of a Snow Miser, a name I gave myself to give it some degree of meaning, but I knew I'd never be like them, never see my own child, never hold a baby born of my genes in my arms, never get to see it grow up, never grow old.

I'd just stay...As I was.

But I tried my best to make the most of it all, really: Being invisible had its own degree of fun value, as did my snow powers.

I'd ice windows in beautiful patterns the sun would blaze away in only a few hours, make once firm concreat into iceslicks so people fell, break water pipes in burts of pure ice, and, above all things... make it snow.

I lived for the joy on the children's faces during the snow days, the happy glow they seemed to have as they dashed in snowball fights, built snowmen, or made lovely snow angels.

My name became somewhat of a real term after awhile: Jack Frost, the Snow Miser, the one who brings the snow days.

An odd little ditty was even written about it once for a children's cartoon I'd watched play on a television in Macy's display window once, and it's upbeat sillliness made me smile each time.

Not to brag, but I was fairly good at singing, and often made up long ballads to pass the time, my voice no more than a passing winter breeze to others.

I think the children heard me, somehow, off in a dreamworld of fantasy they always seemed to be in: as I sang, they would smile, and almost... almost to hear.

That was the worst part of it all, the crushingly worst.

No one could see me. Never had, possibly never would.

I was truly, and utterly..

Alone.


	3. Chapter 3

The long days slipped by like snowflakes: Winter's came and went, Summer's heated the Earth, and I slept.

These rests lasted until Fall, when I was needed again, when icy winds were starting to return to Earth in Arctic blasts that made people shiver and pull up coat collars for fear of frostbite.

I slept in a glen in the woods, something almost like a fairytale: a circle of trees, soft grass, and only the birds to shatter the silence.

The glen was about twenty miles into the forest, far too back aways for a hiking trail or campsite to disturb me. I'm sure no normal person could reach it.

Not that I was normal: Never was...even...then...

Did I remember?

A little: pieces, bits of a time that held no meaning anymore, that seemed like only a shattered memory, a dark dream that wasn't my own.

I was always the odd one out, even then...that I did remember.

Now it was almost ironic: a person who was snubbed for being different becoming invisible, but weliding great power.

I knew I was special: not everyone could ride the winds like a roller coaster, using the very clouds as a balustrade to glide across the skies, nor could they ice a lake with a single touch.

Yet..the loneliness gnawed at me, eat me up from the inside.

I had things to do: I loved reading, and being invisible was a slight aid in obtaining books from open stores when no one was looking.

Against reason, I could have contact with books without frost covering them: I took it as a gift for the simple pleasure of reading.

If I thought it would help, I would've ended everything: I know that is dismal, but at times the thought wasn't far from my mind.

But I was destined for greater things: although the moon never spoke to me again after that night so long ago on Burgess Pond, It came to my glen nightly, shining down at me.

I say "it": He would be the proper term. Mim: The Man in The Moon.

Who he was, and why he'd created me were unknown, but I almost thought of him as a silent parent, a quiet father figure.

It never occurred to me that there were other's like me somewhere.


	4. Chapter 4

I awoke to a cold morning, the sun shafting through the windows in silver tinted beams to splay across the floor like ghosts at a ball of the lost.

The Winter palace served well for me: tours weren't allowed in this room, and the silence soothed me.

I'd stashed my books here, a few precious novels of English origions from a book dealer's stall on the walk bridge across town. I loved the graceful, old fashioned illistrations in them, but today I had no mood for reading: It was chilly, the snowflakes falling like diamonds tossed to the sky.

My sort of day: a day...needing a Snow Miser's touch.

I exited the palace through well worn stairs, icing a few railings in a way the maids would hate me for in the morning, coming out a side door onto the pavement.

I looked up at the gently rolling clouds, the stars glittering merrily, Mim shining down at me.

I felt my lips quirk in a smile, but then I whistled, calling the winds like a faithful dog.

I took off, soaring over the night streets of Russia, laughing all the way, glad to simply be alive.

I landed on a mailbox off a fairly busy street, watching trafficd move slowly by at a crawl on the road, horns echoing and yelling streaming out from houses and hotels, and opera singer's high pitch piercing the night from further along the road like a banshee cry.

I grinned, and tapped my staff on the pavement, sending a stream of frost off to cause damage, pipes already bursting on the nearby houses, a little boy's tongue frozen to a water fountain.

I took to the skies, laughing as I soared, landing on the tallest building in all of Saint Petersberg's steep point, watching the ice curl along the brass benath my hands.

" Now_ THAT_... That was fun. " I laughed, watching the night winds swirl.

" Hey! Wind!"

On cue, the winds blew towards me, carrying away hats and scarves, a few newwspapers fluttering like loosed doves.

" Take me home!" I shouted, leaping into the night, soaring high above the cloudsm, free myself, joyful...

If only for awhile, just a small fraction, happy...free...alive.

" Back home to Burgess!" I yelled, as Mim sparkeld above me, almost seeming to smile.


End file.
